George Lansbury

George Lansbury (22 February 1859-7 May 1940) was Leader of the Labour Party from 25 October 1932 to 8 October 1935, succeeding Arthur Henderson and preceding Clement Attlee.

Biography
George Lansbury was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England in 1859, and he briefly emigrated to Australia in 1884 before returning a year later. He immediately started a campaign against misleading propaganda about the potentials of life as an emigrant. After initial work for the Liberal Party, he joined the Labour Party, and, together with Beatrice Webb, he wrote the 1909 Minority Report of the Royal Commission of the Poor Laws, which became instrumental in the eventual abolition of the Victorian Poor Law system. He was elected to Parliament for Bow and Bromley in 1910, but resigned in 1912 over the harsh treatment of the suffragettes. He did not return to Parliament until 1922, though he achieved new prominence as a defiant Mayor of Poplar from 1919 to 1920. In this post, he chose to be imprisoned rather than to reduce unemployment relief beneits. He was in the Cabinet as First Commissioner of Works from 1929 to 1931. When Ramsey MacDonald formed the National Government, he refused to join. Following Labour's electoral disaster of 1931, he was, with Clement Attlee, one of only two former Cabinet Ministers left on the Labour benches, and he was elected as leader of the Labour Party. When the LAbour conference called for sanctions against Italy after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, he resigned, to be succeeded by Attlee. He was a lifelong pacifist and Christian socialist.